It may seem astonishing to some that there is a need for reprinting a 14-year old dissertation, but the fact is that the book is exactly as relevant to scholars today as it was in 1993. It still represents the world's largest database to compare the responsories of the Office of the Dead in more than 2,000 sources. Since the order of these responsories differed from church to church, this order can be used to localize medieval and Renaissance liturgical books. The book is therefore an absolute necessity for everyone who conducts research on the area it covers. Put differently, the book reveals 'the geography of the concept of death' in Europe from the 9th-16th centuries from a theological, liturgical, ecclesiastical, musical and political perspective - seen from one particular liturgical office: The Office of the Dead.